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User blog:Hidden Scorpius XI/Volume 3. Hypeness and Skepticism.
So, with Production of Volume 3 officially started, most of us have climbed aboard the Hype Train with destination to "Awesomeville" (wow, that sounded stupid), myself included. I am really excited to learn that progress is being made for this show and that Monty's little baby hasn't been forgotten. We've had confirmation that characters hinted at in Vol. 2 will make an appearance in this Volume, plus we'll see the Tournament uphold during this time around. Certainly great news for us the FNDM. However, my exposure to several reviews on RWBY, plus every single critique about some of the most infamous entertaiment products (I'm looking at you, Michael Bay), have made me become very skeptic about certain things. And sadly, RWBY is one of these things that fall under my skepticism. Don't get me wrong, I like the show: The character designs, the animation, the action, the comedy (let's keep a tag on this one, though). But, the great number of reviews floating around the internet and on this wiki all seem to agree that RWBY is not living up to the hype it is getting. The general consensus, once again, puts the reason of the problem in the writing. Miles and Kerry were given the duty of fleshing out all the notes that Monty has made over the years, and they've done a good job at it. The characters feel authentic, the story doesn't feels empty. But it is not free of flaws, and from what I could catch, I will list down the 4 most jarring of the problems with the writing: The Conflict It simply is resolved too easily. I believe we can all agree that the best example of this problem is the Breach. Grimm are invading the city, clothing stores are being destroyed and people are in a panic! Resolved in less than 16 minutes. Some people got hurt, but who cares? Let's take a nap. Miles, Kerry, let me ask you: What was the whole point of the build up about Grimm being so dangerous and being painted up as patient, monstruous threats, if the problem that going to be resolved so easily? So far, we the audience have no real reason to feel nervous or worried about the Grimm, even though they are the greatest threat to humanity. Either show it already, or stop lying to us. The World Building This one is a tricky one to explain, since I'm not good at world building myself. World building (WB) is the way for the writers to talk about the world they are working with through the story. It serves to flesh out the universe we are reading and watching and learn more about it. This becomes a problem when the WB is done mostly through exposition. Somebody mentioned that the reason the setting for RWBY is a school was for the writers to sneak exposition through normal lessons. However this is not the case, since the first REAL bit of WB was when Pyrrha explained to Watso~ I mean Jaune what Aura is. Then on the first actual lesson we see, instead of a piece of information that could have helped us get a better picture about the Grimm, we get incomprehensible babling since the protagonists weren't paying attention to what Professor Port was saying; not that it would have mattered if we could hear him anyway since Port was only "retelling a bombastic story". So, the RWBY Crew resolved on making World of Remnant, a side series of short videos explaining more about... well... the world of Remnant. Sadly, WoR only covers stuff that we already know about or keeps things extremely general, without going further into detail. I would have honestly prefered Dr. Oobleck (or heck, even Port) giving a history lesson to the audience ten times over an over-romanticized and vague narration by Cortana (yeah, like if Jen's participation wasn't hammered in already). My suggestion would be, if they can't competently make WB inside of the story's narration, and WoR will remain in this "Purple Prose" format, that the crew takes time to write down the information about Remnant in detail and publish it in separate journals. That at leas would leave a thiner margin for misinterpretation. The Comedy I told you this would come up again. I love a good joke every now and then, and the comedy on RWBY was executed perfectly so far in terms of pacing and humor. However, and this is gonna be pure nitpicking, most of the jokes seen or heard in RWBY are Inside Jokes from other Rooster Teeth properties. I kid you not; more often than not, you'll find an inside joke in the show rather than an original joke brewed up in the context of RWBY. From Ruby's mouthfilled "That's my uncle" to "No Brakes" ("The F**k Train has No Brakes, Choo-choo!"; Ray Narvaez Jr.), the entirety of RWBY is infested of RT inside jokes. I'd like to see more originality with the comedy, and RT has shown itself capable of that. The Predictability Okay, this one is a really specific issue, but it is still a weak point of the series. Let me explain: From the moment we all finished watching the "Red" Trailer and saw the shilouettes of the other three protagonist, a lot of people went mental when they say the "Black" Character had something in her head resembing kitty ears. That speculative trend died out when we all saw Blake's debut in her own trailer, showing her bow. Then, back when Ruby Rose came out and we learned of the existence of Faunus in the series, that speculation flickered back to life and was finally confirmed in The Stray, when Blake took off her bow and we saw her kitty ears. Nobody was surprised. In the same episode, we are introduced to Penny, an odd girl with certain stiffness in her movements and a peculiar way of speaking. People inmediately started calling shots that Penny is a robot, and the fact that she apparently stores a bunch of swords on her torax certainly support this theory. We then are proved right in A Minor Hiccup, when Penny stoped a truck with her bare hands, which unfortunately tore through her fake skin and revealed her metal components. Again, nobody was surprised. See where am I going with here? I believe that they had a huge chance to pull an "un-reveal" with Penny, where they could have turned the "Penny-is-a-robot" theory into a red-herring, yet they went the same route they used when handling Blake's secret. Put some not-so-subtle hints here and there, let everybody figure it out and then prove everybody right. I am not happy about it, specially since Penny's introduction hapenned seldom minutes before the reveal of Blake's Faunus Status. That's gotta be a new record of unoriginality. And I swear to you, that if this "Raven Branwell" turns out to actually be Yang's mom, I'll go balistic on Miles and Kerry. Category:Blog posts